Here, Blaster
by jarheadxbox
Summary: The saga of an Imperial Stormtrooper. Based loosely on the authors combat experience.
1. Chapter 1

inside of me, each twist of the round

spun deeper, because here, Bullet,

here is where the world ends, every time.

-Brian Turner

When we saw the feed of the star going up next to Endor, all we could do was shake our heads and wonder, how the fuck could a group of sawed off teddy bears manage that? Then the command heard the words and passed it on immediatedly. The Emperor, gone. Lord Vader, gone. Most of the head of the command structure gone, including the Generals and the lord Admiralty. Somehow the fuckers managed to set off fireworks over Coruscant. That's what happens when you keep people safe for a given amount of time, they start to resent you and celebrate your death.

The Commander activated us, of course. And as squad leader I got my men together and made sure everyone was in full battle rattle, blasters fully charged and ready for combat. No cracks in the body armor. Everything ready to go in a moments notice.

Nothing happened, of course.

They portray life in the troopers as being thrill a minute. One second your shooting down rebs in a TIE, the next your with lord vader cutting down alien scum. Its not that. Theres a lot of patrols. A lot of locals who hate the Empire glaring at you and resenting your occupation, and maybe planting mines on the way out so your walker loses a leg, and maybe somebody gets killed. I've joined seven years ago. I was at cloud city when we almost won the whole thing, and I froze my ass off on Hoth where somehow that idiot Admiral Veers let the rebs slip through his fingers. Now it looks like we've lost a big one, but to my men- or to be fair, five men, an alien, and a woman, I'm still Staff Sargeant Hobbs. Most of these troopers here are slick sleeve replacements, and probably shaking in their boots at the idea of the star going down. Me, I remember the first one, so it wasnt a huge shock, but losing the entire command is pretty damn bad.

So we sit and stew as a squad, and wait for Kashykk to respond to the news. Its a small Galaxy, after all, and news travels faster than you would think. We hear a few muffled blaster pops but nothing more exciting than a usual weekend here. Jasgra starts to get up but I motion for her to sit back down. The thing about Jasgra is, she's the only female in the squad, and thinks she has to be twice as good as the next trooper. And maybe she does, I dont know, I'm male and human and probably have some sort of bias that way. The other things about Jasgra is she's applied twice to the 501st. Both times I caught the requesition before she could embarrass herself. The 501st is male only and thats the way Vader likes it, the funny thing is I know Jasgra knows that too, and that means she's doing it only to prove a point. Probably the reason why she joined the troopers in the first place.

Huj sits next to her carrying the heavy blaster. He says he's small for a Nasrah which means he's big as hell for a Storm trooper. Big enough to carry the heavy blaster one handed, if he wanted to, and sometimes he does. He keeps his helmet on most of the time, even when off post. I know its because he's sensitive to the fact that he's an alien, and lets be honest, there's an unnofficial policy about that sort of thing in the troopers. If he sent off one of those requisitions that Jasgra keeps filling out there might be real trouble. I've heard this bias extends all the way to the Emperor, who is now officially sucking down space fumes in the afterlife. So maybe it will go away but I doubt it. In the meantime I just keep the big guy happy and he provides the squad with covering fire. As it should be.

Jank and Teran are both capable troopers. I had to teach them both to shoot, when I first got to the unit, but other than that capable enough. With so many replacements getting chewed through the meat grinder in this war a lot of them are just happy enough to spray and pray from the hip. That's almost always a bad idea in the long run. Waste to battery cell on your blaster and your tits up to a well aimed Reb shot. You take the time to look down your sights, and if your a good squad leader before you head out you take the time to zero your weapons properly. Which brings us to the problem child.

Oswatar has a bad attitude. He doesnt take instruction well, and he doesnt like authority, and if I had a choice, I'd take him out back and put a blaster round through his head. The problem is Oswatar has an uncanny gift for staying alive. And for staying just on this side of insolence. What I mean is you tell him to do something, and he'll do it, but only just barely. In the field he's a mess but he'll live. In garrison you have to put him in the back of formation because he'll slouch, or not clean his armor- and in garrison you have to clean white armor all. the. time. The thing about troopers like Oswatar, they either end up as heroes or in the stockade, and I can tell he hasnt decided which one its going to be yet. So there you have it, a female, an alien, two replacements, a shitbird, and me, and you can tell how all of us ended up on a multi-layered deathtrap like Kashykk. Outside the explosions get louder, and one rocks the outside of our room. The rooms fashioned out of rockcrete so it takes a lot to rattle, but the squad is up and ready, and we are out the door double-time, with the crack of ozone in the air.


	2. Chapter 2

The principles of squad based combat are very simple, and usually hard to ignore. If you want to stay alive, anyway. They are called fire and movement, and firing maneuver. They are drilled into the heads of every trooper with a basic training instructor worth any sand. It goes like this.

Trooper one takes a knee behind cover, or gets down in the prone position. Basically makes himself as small a target as possible. He fires downrange at the enemy target, laying down what is known as suppressive fire, which basically amounts to firing directly ahead regardless if you can place your target or not, in an attempt to either kill the enemy or keep him from firing back at you.

Trooper two runs directly forward about fifteen to twenty meters at which point he either gets prone or behind cover, and starts to lay down fire on the same target. When this happens, trooper one gets up and runs forward like trooper two. The idea is that at the entire time half your squad is pushing forward, and the other half is laying down fire. It's a basic infantry concept that's been around long before the blaster, going all the way back to simple projectile weapons. The problem with it is human nature. Its human nature to duck and cover away from the blaster fire, not to run toward it and see what happens. So we drill and we drill until the training becomes second nature and today I am very proud when the squad does their job. The red bolts are cracking all around us with incoming fire, but my squad is doing what they are supposed to, pushing forward smartly, and returning it back into the woods where it belongs. I hang back long enough to hook up with Teran, the radio operator.

"Get the blockade on the line." I bark at him, over the helmets intercom."See if they cant get us some TIE's down here for air support." Teran starts the procedure and I leave him to it, long enough to physically prevent Jasgra from trying to be a hero and fucking up the whole operation. What it is, is there's a trooper wandering around with one arm, right in the open, covered in scorch marks but somehow not dead. Yet, anyway. "Fire and movement, goddamit!" I say. "We can get casualties evac'd after consolidation." Which is a partial truth. The one armed guy will be dead by then and officially none of my concern, but I need Jasgra to get her head back in the game for right now, and it works. She bounds up ahead fifteen meters, allowing Huj to really let loose on the heavy blaster, enough to quite the entire forest for a minute. The squad manages to push up to the very edge of the forest canopy, and I look back, snapping at Teran "Where the hell are those damn TIE's?" Only he cant hear me because he's dead. The blaster took half his helmet clean off and most the head underneath that side, leaving me with a clear look at whats left of his brains. With no time to be squeamish. I take the radio off his back, praying that it hasn't been damaged. And its good. Calmly, I speak the fire mission in to the receiver, thankful when I hear the voice of a pilot answer me. "Squad." I tell them on the intercom. "Incoming danger close." And whats left of my squad knows to hunker down behind cover. The TIE's scream overhead, and start to drop their bombs. It takes a special type of round to penetrate the canopy on Kashykk. It has to detonate once, then finish dropping until it hits the hard target. If the wookies weren't worth so much as slaves I know the empire wouldn't even bother. The TIE's scream overhead and drop a massive flash of light, and some of our troopers cheer. I tell the pilot to fire for effect, and he comes in again, dropping more hot death on the wooks. The trees burn bright enough in the forest canopy to turn night into day, until finally true daylight comes, and we pick up the dead.

After a man dies the body loses control of its bowel movements and it defecates. After a wookie dies the same procedure occurs, only it's a bigger body, so it can hold a lot more shit. That was what the forest smelled like to me, at that moment in time, burnt trees and wookie shit. We were at the point after consolidation where we had already attended to the dead and wounded, and managed to top off the batteries packs in our blasters, which left only pushing through and re-engaging the enemy. Which meant: picking up pieces of wookie dead. By virtue of being alive my squad had drawn the short straw on this regard.

It takes two grown men or one Huj to pick up a mature wookie corpse. Fortunately for us the TIE's had blasted them into such minor pieces that even Jasgra could lend a hand. Frequently I would catch Oswater sneaking off to try and smoke some nicotine, and I would have to get his ass in check. No excuses in this squad, everyone pitches in. I do my part like the rest of them. There's a salt from Dantooine you can hold under your noise and it reduces your ability to smell. Before we start I share it with everyone except Oswater. We pick up pieces and shove them into the front scoop of the modified AT-ST walker we use for this purpose. I doubt intel will retrieve anything of significance. The wookies fight as they live- mostly naked, except maybe for one ornament and a weapon. But I doubt that I'd wear clothing either if I was covered with that much hair. At any rate I'm not even sure if they have a native written language. Big, strong, and stupid…the perfect slaves, or the perfect near mindless insurgents, whichever way you want to look at it. A message comes across my comm to report to the CO's office. I leave Jasgra in charge of the clean-up and get too it.


End file.
